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Portable Car GPS units? HELP me decide...

Melensdad

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
Hey guys & gals, I'm looking for a portable automobile GPS system for my lovely wife's vehicle.

Garmin, Tom Tom, ???

Who makes the BEST of the portable units. Not looking for something that needs to be installed. VOICE DIRECTIONS would be a MUST have feature.

By BEST I would include the following:
Voice Directions
Upgradeable maps
Ease of Use
Completeness of integrated map set that comes with the basic unit
LARGE screen, at least 4", preferably larger!

I've used the built in units from Audi and VW and like both, VW is lacking a bit compared to the Audi unit. I'm not expecting that sort of functionality from a little portable unit. But it would be nice to get a feature laden unit.

Anyone with experiences in these things?

I know Dargo had a thread about this topic last year, but given the way technology changes I have to figure that is out of date and the market may have changed?
 
I have a cheaper Garmin nuvi 200 I got for $99 and like it a lot. The wife wants a new one that speaks the street names as well as telling you when to turn. They are fairly accurate in urban areas but not as good in the sticks where I live. Expect to drop $2-300 for a good one.
 
We got Tina a Garmin nuvi 250W and we got a nuvi 260W they range in price from 189.99 to 269.99. We upgraded Tina's maps using her laptop and the Garmin site at Christmas time. Took about 10 minutes.
We all love them. John hasn't gotten mad at the navigator (me) since we got it. You must be sure not to set it to avoid main highways, or it will take you 24 hours to drive from Pittsburgh to Goldsboro N.C., and she will tell you to get off at every exit that comes up. John was about to throw the thing out the window, cause every few minutes it was telling us to exit or turn around.

:hammer::hammer: Other than that I would not want to be with out it if
going to a place I am unfamiliar with.

I even found a short cut to work.
 
Mrs. Zoom also has the Garmin Nuvi but I don't recall the model #.

My FIL has a similar unit. He doesn't have a computer so he asked me to do the map updates. It was an absolute NIGHTMARE to get the map updates. It was also pretty darn expensive at something like $70-80. I told Mrs. Zoom to not even think about doing the updates. Roads don't change that much and neither do hotels/restaurants.
 
LOL I have to agree with the throw it out the window statement! We bought ours on a sale at wally world and until I sat down at the house and set a few parameters I wanted to do the same thing. After about 8 months it is a really handy tool for traveling. Great to use for detours or traffic jams as well. I know I saved about 45 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic leaving a Penn State game last year by switching routes using the Garmin. A great feature is the mute if you don't want to hear "martha" yakking at every turn in the road.
 
Well I am now torn between a few different models.

The Garmin Nuvi 855T looks awesome. I like the fact that it allows you to speak and it has voice recognition that will listen to your voice, then give you directions to where you want to go. As someone who has tried to use a GPS while driving I can see voice control of the unit as a benefit.

Garmin has a new unit coming out at the end of this month, the 1490. I like the size of that unit, the screen is larger. Sadly it will come out while I am no vacation and that is sort of a logistic problem for me.

I'm taking a 9 day driving vacation to see some tourist traps like RUBY FALLS and ROCK CITY and then heading to ST AUGUSTINE BEACH. I've made the basic trip a dozen times, without a GPS, so I don't need one for this trip. But it would be handy to have simply because I'll know where I'm going (at least the basic roads) and can experiment along the way.

BTW, my daughter stated that she "misses going to the Bellagio" in Las Vegas, so that made the decision to visit some of the more traditional tourist places. When I was a child I think it was sort of a right of passage to go on a car vacation to see RUBY FALLS and visit ROCK CITY and the INCLINE RAILWAY. So my daughter will now be treated to the same. I may even squeeze in a 2 or 3 day trip up to the Wisconsin Dells before the end of summer. Clearly she needs to see something other than the places that I've taken her to visit!!!
 
Bob,

Which Garmin GPS unit did you end up getting for your wife? My wife's birthday is on Saturday and I would like to get her one.

Thanks,

Kevin
 
I ended up with the 855T and it is over priced and offers features that, when you dig into the actual instruction manual, only have very limited use.

There are features like LIVE TRAFFIC UPDATES and REROUTES. The problem is they only work INSIDE SOME CITIES. There are other features that make more sense but still were not used.

My advice, now that I've overspent, is to get a mid-priced unit WITH THE BIGGEST TOUCH SCREEN that has the basics. I'm extremely disappointed my choice. It does what it says it will do, but sometimes a fully featured unit is so fully featured that it becomes useless. Sort of like a waffle maker that grills sandwiches, poaches eggs, cooks pizza and fries sausage patties. Sometimes you just want a damn waffle.
 
A warning to anyone else looking into portable GPS units for their car...a co-worker of mine bought a Tom-Tom and discovered that it is essentially useless for rural addresses. When entering an address, there is no way to enter a letter. So an address such as 4N3842, which is quite common "out in the country" is impossible to enter in as your destination address.

He bought a Garmin to replace his Tom-Tom.
 
With 3 of my kids driving now, I now have 4 of the Garmin Nuvi units. I forget the model number, but they all talk to you and give you voice turn by turn directions. I also bought the "lifetime" update option for them. I was only updating every 3 or 4 years, but I often found myself being shown driving through a corn field when I was on a newer road. Now I update all of them at least once a year. None have ever broken and none have failed except the older ones have required replacement of the rubber suction cup that sticks to the windshield as the rubber has hardened over time.

My BIL bought his wife a Tom Tom for Christmas. It's scattered somewhere along I24 from when he threw it out his window during a trip shortly after Christmas. They now have a couple of the same model Garmin Nuvi that my wife has and they've been happy with them.
 
Thinking we probably wouldn't use it much, we bought a cheap Nextar unit from Kohl's a couple of years back. It think after all of the discounts we got it for something like $60. It is a smaller touch screen (3.5") but it has voice directions. I used my bosses Magellen (don't know the model) when we went to Cleveland a few months back for a business trip. I didn't like it. It was cumbersome to use and it didn't speak the street names like my Nextar does. I also didn't like the view, though he did say that was changable. I think he said he paid $250 for his. I wouldn't trade him.

We liked ours so much, we bought 4 of the Nextar units for gifts this year. Monica's sister used it in January to go to Myrtle Beach and said it got her lost. I don't think that is possible as she was already lost - and still is.:w00t2:
 
Good thing we dont have to depend on maps & asking for local directions anymore , like You could get for free at the gas staitons while you were getting full service while fueling up from your friendly gas station attendent . :whistling:

I see on the news all of the time where people are lost on back country roads because They replaced common sense with all this new high dollar technology . Yes just My old Dinasaur opinion :biggrin:
 
Cowboy said:
Good thing we dont have to depend on maps & asking for local directions anymore , like You could get for free at the gas staitons while you were getting full service while fueling up from your friendly gas station attendent . :whistling:

I see on the news all of the time where people are lost on back country roads because They replaced common sense with all this new high dollar technology . Yes just My old Dinasaur opinion :biggrin:
Click to expand...

What do you care? You claim you haven't left your property in two years! :poke:
 
Cowboy said:
I see on the news all of the time where people are lost on back country roads because They replaced common sense with all this new high dollar technology
Click to expand...
I'm a "belt" and "suspender" sort of guy. I had to go to the doctor yesterday, he moved his office to a new location. I printed out a map AND I used my GPS. When driving to lands far far away there is always an atlas in the car and I check out the basic route on the map first, then generally use the GPS for turn by turn direction but keep the atlas/map handy for reference.
 
Melensdad said:
I'm a "belt" and "suspender" sort of guy. I had to go to the doctor yesterday, he moved his office to a new location. I printed out a map AND I used my GPS. When driving to lands far far away there is always an atlas in the car and I check out the basic route on the map first, then generally use the GPS for turn by turn direction but keep the atlas/map handy for reference.
Click to expand...

What Bob forgot (ha!) to mention is that he was visiting his "old timers" disease doctor, and he couldn't remember if he had the directions.
 
DaveNay said:
What Bob forgot (ha!) to mention is that he was visiting his "old timers" disease doctor, and he couldn't remember if he had the directions.
Click to expand...
Look here whippersnapper . . . oh look a kitty . . . I like shiny things . . . what?
 
We had a Magellan 4100 which was "OK" but not the best. We used it for long distance (e.g. cross country) trips and it just wasn't made for that. It didn't have the ability to "look ahead" to wee what rest stops/gas stations were coming up 10 - 15 - 20 miles ahead to answer the question "should we stop now or press on a while?"

My wife's new car has OnStar which she really likes. No programming at all. Just "press the blue button" and tell the nice man/lady where you want to go, or ask them if there are gas stations or rest stops up ahead.

I have an IPhone and got a Nav App for it (Navigon) (yes, there's an App for that :smile:).
It gives traffic alerts for your route, lets you look ahead for gas/rest stops, gives voice directions with street names, alerts you (by voice) when you go more than 10mph above the speed limit (settable), etc. It's amazing, really.

One thing about GPS Nav systems, IMHO. On trips, they're great for telling you how to get from where you are to where you want to go. But if you want to know where you are in relation to other things (e.g. cities, sights, etc.) a good old paper map is still the best tool for that.
 
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